Dr. Mark Edwards, an Arizona State University professor, author, and well known “algaevangelist,” whose work focuses on resolving world hunger and pursuing sustainable energy with green solutions said, “There are those of us who believe Arizona will be the algae state. I’m just delighted.” Edwards is also AlgaeBio’s V-P of Corporate Development and Marketing.

Two bills were introduced by Rep. Matt Heinz (D-Tucson) back in January. The first algae-friendly bill, HB 2226, widens the tax definitions of agricultural real property in Arizona to include lands devoted to “algaculture”, offering the same lower property tax rates enjoyed by other farming businesses.

The second, HB 2225, will add the growth and harvest of algae to the definition of agricultural state trust lands, allowing the Arizona State Land Department to issue agricultural leases for algaculture operations.
Edward’s enthusiasm shows with, “It’s great to see such timely legislation that makes so much sense, and fits so well for this state — because of our non-arable land, flat land, the abundance of waste water and brine water, and 360 days of sunshine a year. Arizona has an opportunity to lead, globally, because a lot of other jurisdictions, other countries, will follow this example.”

The new state legislation is expected to allow Arizona to build a more appealing business climate for algae companies seeking affordable land to grow and harvest algae. It will also allow the people of Arizona to capitalize on the current business climate in the algae industry, which is seeing more and more ventures, whether they’re focused on biofuels, nutriceuticals, pharmaceuticals, or animal feed and move from the lab to the boardroom, backed by serious investment.

Admittedly Arizona is on an inside track with location, backing it up now with fair treatment for tax purposes and from Dr. Edwards a load of common sense. “I and others have been lobbying for something like this for almost three years now. Whether the water is running around a raceway, or bubbling in a vertical column, this is in fact agriculture — we’re farming in water,” says Dr. Edwards.

“This legislation, really, is an enabler. It makes algae production in Arizona more business-friendly. It will also help farmers engage in the algae industry, because they’re going to start thinking about using algae to remediate their manure and their waste streams,” Edwards adds.

Here’s the ‘killshot’ that other states are going to have to come to grip with and top for competitiveness in locating facilities and the jobs:

Edwards continues, “And remember, growing is only one part of it. Much of the tax comes from finished products. If we can invest in our future, with more product going into the supply chain, retail sales will make up for the lower taxes many, many times over. The consumers benefit. The taxpayers benefit. It’ll all come back around, big-time. And that was really the argument that got (the legislation) through.”

Florida is in part, listening. New energy legislation in the state of Florida became law April 14 despite Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s failure to sign the bill. The legislation, HB 7117, contains several measures aimed to encourage the development and expansion of the renewable energy sector within the state, including biofuels production and distribution. The bill also addresses policies and restrictions for growing certain strains of algae and cyanobacteria.

While Ohio and Arizona are getting competitive for business growth, Florida is fumbling with limits on an odd assortment of sales tax exemptions, for some unimaginable reason. There is also an investment tax credit related to biofuels production. Under the bill, the credit can apply to up to 75 percent of all capital costs, operation and maintenance costs, and research and development costs that are incurred between July 1, 2012, and June 30, 2016. The credit cannot exceed $1 million per fiscal year for each taxpayer. A limit of $10 million is made per fiscal year for all taxpayers – how’s that for not looking, well, serious.

The Florida law includes provisions related to the cultivation of some algae species. Under the new law a person may not cultivate a nonnative plant, algae, or blue-green algae – including genetically engineered plants, algae and blue-green algae in plantings greater in size than two contiguous acres, except under a special permit.

Florida has dived right into the Orwellian or big brother knows better for you mentality with a permit is not required to cultivate plants that, based on experience or research data, do not pose the risk of becoming an invasive species. Plants commonly grown in the state for the purpose of human food, commercial feed, feedstock, or forage are not covered by the provision. Additional exemptions could be made to the permitting requirements based on consultations with the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Florida. A bureaucratic barrier is now fully set up.

Ohio and Arizona are in the hunt for algae producers, with Florida nibbling at the idea. Perhaps a boom of activity will spark other states and load a little sense into Florida. Its happening, and those are the states on the front line.

Farnesene is a 15-carbon isoprenoid hydrocarbon molecule that works as the basis for a wide range of products as varied from specialty chemical applications to transportation fuels such as diesel. When used as a fuel precursor, farnesene can be hydrogenated to farnesane, which has a high cetane number of 58.

Amyris Pilot Scale Fermentation Suite

Amyris is presenting a summary of the results at the 34th Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals in New Orleans, Louisiana.  The project comes from a U.S. Department of Energy funded renewable diesel effort.

Sweet Sorghum in Cultivation. Click image for the largest view.

The pilot-scale project uses both the free soluble sugars and the cellulosic biomass sugars from Ceres’ sweet sorghum hybrids grown in Alabama, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana and Tennessee. To process the soluble sugars that accumulate in the plants, the sorghum juice was first extracted from the stems and concentrated into sugar syrup by Ceres. Then Amyris then processed the syrup at its California pilot facility using its proprietary yeast fermentation system that converts plant sugars into its trademarked product, Biofene.

The DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) converted the leftover biomass from Ceres’ hybrids into cellulosic sugars at its Colorado pilot-scale biochemical conversion facility, which Amyris subsequently fermented into renewable farnesene.  That put almost the entire plant into the fuel precursor.

Secondary products from the Amyris biorefinery project include lubricants, polymers and other petrochemical substitutes. These secondary products are derived from the same C15 farnesene fermentation intermediate as the Amyris Renewable Diesel, providing opportunities to reduce risk in commercial production.

Spencer Swayze, Ceres director of business development said, “We believe that sweet sorghum could be an important and complementary source of fermentable sugars as the U.S. expands the production of renewable biofuels and biochemicals through the use of non-food crops outside of prime cropland. As an energy crop, sweet sorghum is an impressive producer of low-cost, fermentable sugars. A second stream of sugars from the biomass would be highly compelling.”

Sweet sorghum as a dedicated energy crop has a number of advantages. Its fast growing and can efficiently produce both large amounts of fermentable sugars and biomass. The plants require substantially less fertilizer than sugarcane, and can be grown in drier areas because it utilizes water more efficiently.

Todd Pray, Amyris director of product management said, “The results from these evaluations confirmed that the Amyris No Compromise renewable diesel production process performs well across different sugar sources. Ceres’ sweet sorghum hybrids produced sugars that yielded comparable levels of farnesene as sugarcane and other sugar sources Amyris has utilized. Sweet sorghum can provide timely feedstock flexibility with environmental benefits. We look forward to utilizing Ceres’ sweet sorghum in our commercial-scale production facilities.”

Amyris Sweet Sorghum to Diesel Process Diagram. Click image for the largest view.

The primary product of the Amyris IBR is Amyris Renewable Diesel, an advanced biofuel registered for use by the US EPA and covered by an issued US patent.

This news is likely a serious step into building a middle distillate range of bio hydrocarbons.  Amyris is already working with Total in Brazil working on a 50:50 joint venture company that will have exclusive rights to produce and market renewable diesel and jet fuel worldwide, as well as non-exclusive rights to other renewable products such as drilling fluids, solvents, polymers and specific bio-lubricants. The venture aims to begin operations in the first quarter of 2012.

As for the numbers, which seem to be proprietary, Amyris is scaling up its Biofene production in Brazil, Europe and the United States through various production arrangements with six known to be in hand.  Going for the investment at scale indicates that something commercial is worth putting in significant money.

The Ceres feedstock could bring mass production.  What the production rates are hasn’t been disclosed yet.  But as commercial scale efforts get further underway and efforts to acquire land and farming skill commitments – the values are sure to leak out.  How sweet sorghum compares to cotton, peanuts, corn and soybeans is yet to be seen.  To be competitive the prices have to support the production switch for terms long enough for the investments to payback and profit producers.

With a great cetane number and no sulfur the diesel product would be very desirable.

One would expect that a built molecule such as Amyris makes for a middle distillate would be more costly than a derived one coming from crushed seed oils and other sources. Time will tell, and the energy rich compression ignition engine will live on.

Researchers understand they must come up with a way to produce as much biofuel as possible in the smallest amount of space using the least amount of resources.  Water is of particular concern – most cultivated crops need fresh water while some algae can use various water sources ranging from wastewater to brackish water and be grown in small, intensive plots on denuded land.

Robert Settlage, Ph.D. at VBI’s Data Analysis Core (DAC) explains, “Getting the data is now the easy part. What we’re doing in the DAC is enabling researchers to move beyond informatics issues of assembly and analysis to regain their focus on the biological implications of their research.”

The payoff is further analysis revealed that with fairly straightforward genetic modification, N. gaditana should be capable of producing biofuel on an industrial scale, which may be the wave of the future in fuel research and production.

Nannochloropis Gaditana Content. Click image for the largest view.

Nannochloropis gaditana was selected because it comes from a strain family that’s attracted sustained interest from algal biofuels researchers owing to the high photoautotrophic biomass accumulation rates, high lipid content and the successful cultivation at large scale using natural sunlight in either open ponds or enclosed systems.  There is already a long company list in research such as Solix Biofuels, Aurora Algae, Seambiotic, Hairong Electric Company/Seambiotic and Proviron.

Improvements in strain productivity have been stalled by the lack of a genetically tractable model system.  That’s where VBI comes in.  Nannochloropis could out produce the popular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and the diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum, both of which have genome sequences and established transformation methods, but neither of these algae is a natively exceptional producer of biomass or lipids.

Nannochloropis gaditana has been successfully cultivated outdoors at commercial scale, is oleaginous and stores relatively large amounts of lipid, in the form of triacylglycerides, even during logarithmic growth. N. gaditana has high photoautotrophic biomass and lipid production rates and can grow to high densities while tolerating a wide range of conditions with regards to pH, temperature and salinity.  These attributes make N. gadiyana a great candidate for development into a model organism for algal biofuel production.

The results have been published in Nature Communications.  Best of all the full paper is available to read and study.

It seems few people grasp the significance of the scale involved. Crude oil is being used at a rate in excess of 86 million barrels a day or 3,570,000.000 gallons.  U.S. ethanol is closing in on one million barrels per day or 42 million gallons. The ratio is 3,750:42 (About 536:6 or 89:1).

Biofuels have a long way to go.  The money is coming and the genome sequence for a top level candidate is in hand.  It won’t be long until a super algae design makes news.

Let the genetic designer modification begin.

The study paper is published today, March 30 2012, in the journal Science.  The study explains how James Liao, UCLA’s Ralph M. Parsons Foundation Chair in Chemical Engineering, and his team use a method for storing electrical energy as chemical energy in higher alcohols, which then can be used as liquid transportation fuels.

UCLA's Liao Electricity & CO2 to Make Butanol Fuel With Genetically Modified Organisms

Liao and his team genetically engineered a lithoautotrophic microorganism known as Ralstonia eutropha H16 to produce isobutanol and 3-methyl-1-butanol in an electro-bioreactor using carbon dioxide as the sole carbon source and electricity as the sole energy input.

For background, photosynthesis is the process of converting light energy to chemical energy and storing it in the bonds of sugar. There are two parts to photosynthesis, a light reaction and a dark reaction. The light reaction converts light energy to chemical energy and must take place in the light. The dark reaction, which converts CO2 to sugar, doesn’t directly need light to occur.

Liao explains, “We’ve been able to separate the light reaction from the dark reaction and instead of using biological photosynthesis, we are using solar panels to convert the sunlight to electrical energy, then to a chemical intermediate, and using that to power carbon dioxide fixation to produce the fuel. This method could be more efficient than the biological system.”

Continuing, Liao said that with biological systems, the plants in use require large areas of agricultural land. However, because Liao’s method does not require the light and dark reactions to take place together, solar panels, for example, can be built in the desert or on rooftops. It’s becoming obvious that any electrical source would do.

Theoretically, the hydrogen generated by solar electricity can drive CO2 conversion in lithoautotrophic microorganisms engineered to synthesize high-energy dense liquid fuels. But the low solubility, low mass-transfer rate and the safety issues surrounding free hydrogen gas limit the efficiency and scalability of such processes. Instead Liao’s team found formic acid to be a favorable substitute and efficient energy carrier.

Liao goes on, “Instead of using hydrogen, we use formic acid as the intermediary,” said Liao and then describes the process, ”We use electricity to generate formic acid and then use the formic acid to power the CO2 fixation in bacteria in the dark to produce isobutanol and higher alcohols.”

With the process worked out the team now believes the electrochemical formate production and the biological CO2 fixation and higher alcohol synthesis open up the possibility of electricity-driven bioconversion of CO2 to a variety of chemicals. In addition, the transformation of formate into liquid fuel will also play an important role in the biomass refinery process.

Liao winds up the press release saying, “We’ve demonstrated the principle, and now we think we can scale up. That’s our next step.”

Perhaps then the bedeviling questions can be answered.  How much electricity per unit of formic acid, how much formic acid and CO2 to what price of microorganisms, and what does a gallon cost?  The press release is very vague.

Yet one can fully understand the “Eurkea!” feeling and the rush to publish.  If the scale numbers work out well, the stampede to the researchers door will be quite something.

Liao points out an important point, “The current way to store electricity is with lithium ion batteries, in which the density is low, but when you store it in liquid fuel, the density could actually be very high. In addition, we have the potential to use electricity as transportation fuel without needing to change current infrastructure.”

This is an astonishing prospect.  The sources for CO2 are a long list.  Coal fired power plants alone generate an enormous store of CO2, relatively concentrated and not so hard to source. Using coal twice would an impressive accomplishment.  Displacing some oil production would be a bonus.  Depending on the state of the CO2 concentration crude oil could be a nearly obsolete product.

If the concentration required were low enough perhaps atmosphere alone would do as a source – an expectation quite hopeful, to say the least.

Liao has cracked into a huge potential opportunity.  How the first step numbers come in will be interesting, but when the process concept shows its details Liao and his team may be credited for an entire new industry.

This news makes an important point – for any nation with any sense, very low cost electricity is going to be an economy supporting bedrock and expensive electricity a millstone to dragging an economy down.

The folks at UCLA must be very proud today – as we are of them.

Pike Research has looked into the commercial efforts of 10 independent “Big Oil” firms to see what’s going on.  As you can imagine from the numbers above, Big Oil is sure to not be left out.

Click image for the largest view.

Crude oil over $100 for an extended period is also a strong motivator for capital investment.  Today the biofuels come mostly from common crops like corn and sugar cane, palm oil, soya and others.  States and national governments have put mandates on fuels to include renewable, i.e. biofuels into the market.

As regular readers know, there is a veritable stampede to discover, research, develop and scale up advanced conversion pathways that rely on low cost, non-food feedstocks.  The best ideas are getting quite sophisticated now and include planning about securing the feedstocks and getting control on the costs.  Logistics have become very important because the feedstocks are quite bulky.

Big Oil has a situation that is easy to grasp.  They need raw materials, currently almost entirely crude oil, to make products to sell.  They are competitive and work at mass scale driving to ever lower prices and reduced costs.  A major problem is the perception of the public and consumers over the profits – the profit numbers are big – but the dividends are spread over a vast stockholder pool.  On the whole oil stocks aren’t so great, but they are quite reliable.  They’re great for pension investing.

Like everyone, especially our kids, like plants and animals, and even bureaucracies, Big Oil wants to grow.  Its natural, growth is a natural part of life. No growth is a serious problem.

People tend to think Big Oil is opposed to biofuels, and if the PR is to be believed, it sure looks that way. But when you look, like Pike Research did, at the budgets, biofuels get a lot more money than the PR departments.

Pike looked at only 10 of the world’s Big Oil companies who have sunk billions into developing the industry over the last 5 years.  A few are already working at near-term production via proven, first generation pathways, all acknowledge that advanced biofuels must play a strategic role in the future energy mix.  The 10 firms Pike examines have established strategic partnerships and invested in innovative startups in an effort to build out integrated supply chain delivery networks.

Meanwhile in the biofuel community there is a looming $336 billion estimated cost of meeting emerging mandates over the next decade.  For the biofuel community and consumers, getting access to the oil industry’s expertise and capital will be critical to scaling up biofuel production.

No one is more acutely aware of the crude oil resources situation than Big Oil or enduring more cumulative stress.  Fuel use is down, taxes are up, regulations are an avalanche, and public perception is appalling.  Growth in home markets without crude prices counted is off, requiring export sales at wholesale.

Big Oil explicitly understands they’ll need advanced biofuels to protect existing market share and grow future revenue.  So far 31 countries mandate a biofuel component in their fuel markets.

There’s about $2 trillion of world fuel market.  Big Oil wants a healthy vibrant and growing economy for their market, their employees and the shareholders.  30 billion gallons annually in a daily crude oil market of about 3 ½ billion gallons is only a film on top.

That’s why commercial scale is so critical. Technology has to scale up to worthwhile amounts to get serious attention.  In biofuels the pricing will hinge on the cost of feedstock, logistics and processing all together.  In the mind of a big oil company a good oil field would make say 100,000 barrels a day – a worthwhile endeavor, real commercial scale.  That would be roughly equivalent to an annual 1.5 billion gallon biofuel project.

There are no credible proposals from biofuels at that scale – yet.  Only ethanol in the U.S. and Brazil has credibility so far and it makes money.

Of the 10 firms Pike chose to consider (see graphic above)  the top four are all well into ethanol primarily in Brazil.  The next three have plans working to meet imminent demand and are working on ideas outside of ethanol.  The last three seem much more conservative, and are working outside of ethanol.  No commercial scale investments yet, its more of a research into research sort of thing with investing that looks to outsiders – as haphazard.  But the wide net policy has a far better chance to catch the next biofuel wave that can scale up.

A few words about Pike Research: Pike’s business model is different from what one usually sees – the firm paid to research and write a report.  Instead, Pike asks the questions and writes a report or runs a seminar, etc. for astonishing prices.  That gives them a more objective reference point.  It’s also a very busy place.

Like your humble writer you too can register with Pike and get the announcements of reports and other services.  On this topic there is an executive summary and brochure available. There seems to be one every business day.  They are worth the few moments for a review because Pike survives by asking a lot of good questions.  Regular observation of what they’re offering is quite insightful.

Big Oil is the economic black sheep for now – essentially because people don’t or won’t understand the circumstances.  Fundamentally the oil industry is just like us, trying to grow, make some money, and build out security for our progeny and ourselves.

The independent oil firms will roll into biofuel when it’s possible both in scale and economics.  Just like us they want the business, it won’t matter if the source is crops, algae, artificial photosynthesis or crude oil.  They would like nothing better than everyone to be able to afford a nice car and drive it with great pleasure.

Methyl ketones are a class of chemical compounds we’re most familiar with in fragrance and flavoring products and might provide the clean, green and renewable fuel for transport use.  They were discovered more than a century ago in the aromatic evergreen plant known as rue. Since then they’ve been found to be common in tomatoes and other plants, as well as insects and microorganisms. Today they are used to provide scents in essential oils and flavoring in cheese and other dairy products.

The driver is advanced synthetic biofuels, liquid transportation fuels derived from the cellulosic biomass of perennial grasses and other non-food plants, as well as from agricultural waste.  The idea is seen as a potential replacement for gasoline, diesel and jet fuels. Equally touted is the synthesis of these fuels through microbes that digest the biomass and convert its sugars into fuel molecules.

At JBEI, researchers are focusing on developing advanced biofuels that can be used in today’s engines and distribution infrastructures. In previous research, lead researcher Harry Beller and his colleagues engineered E. coli with special enzymes to synthesize from fatty acids long-chain alkene hydrocarbons that can be turned into diesel fuel. Fatty acids are the energy-rich molecules in bacterial and plant cells that have been dubbed nature’s petroleum.

Beller-and-Goh-Webvers. Click image for the largest view.

Harry Beller is a JBEI microbiologist who directs the Biofuels Pathways department for JBEI’s Fuels Synthesis Division, and also is a senior scientist with the Earth Sciences Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is the corresponding author with co-authors of a paper describing this work titled “Engineering of Bacterial Methyl Ketone Synthesis for Biofuels,” which was published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

In the research test series the E.Coli production of methyl ketone yielded high cetane numbers, which is a diesel fuel rating comparable to the octane number for gasoline – making them strong candidates for the production of advanced biofuels.

Beller explains, “Our findings add to the list of naturally occurring chemical compounds that could serve as biofuels, which means more flexibility and options for the biofuels industry. We’re especially encouraged by our finding that it is possible to increase the methyl ketone titer production of E. coli more than 4,000-fold with a relatively small number of genetic modifications.” That’s OK, but the press release isn’t saying what the base line is for the 4,000 fold improvement, but does point out native E. coli make virtually undetectable quantities of methyl ketones, Beller and his colleagues were able to overcome this deficiency using the same tools of synthetic biology they used to engineer high fatty acid-producing E.coli.

The JBEI team is focusing on developing advanced biofuels that can be used in today’s engines and distribution infrastructures. In previous research, Beller and his colleagues engineered E. coli with special enzymes to synthesize from fatty acids long-chain alkene hydrocarbons that can be turned into diesel fuel. Fatty acids are the energy-rich molecules in bacterial and plant cells that have been dubbed nature’s petroleum.

Beller sets up the background saying, “In the earlier studies, we noticed that bacteria engineered to produce unnaturally high levels of fatty acids also produced some methyl ketones. When we tested the cetane numbers of these ketones and saw that they were quite favorable, we were prompted to look more closely at developing methyl ketones as biofuels.”

On the technology Beller said, “For methyl ketone production, we made two major modifications to E. coli.  First we modified specific steps in beta-oxidation, the metabolic pathway that E. coli uses to break down fatty acids, and then we increased the expression of a native E. coli protein called FadM. These two modifications combined to greatly enhance the production of methyl ketones.”

The team tested two methyl ketones for cetane numbers, undecanone and tridecanone. The cetane number is a measure of ignition delay during compression ignition; a higher number indicates a shorter ignition delay period and is more favorable than a lower number. In the United States, diesel fuel must have a minimum cetane number of 40. The cetane number for undecanone was 56.6. The number for a 50/50 mix of undecanone and tridecanone was 58.4.  Despite this impressive performance, there was a concern that both these methyl ketones have a relatively high melting point, which is a disadvantage for cold-temperature fuel properties.

Beller picks up the issue with, “We were able to mitigate the melting point problem in our best producing strains of E.coli by increasing the percentage of monounsaturated methyl ketones, which have much lower melting points than their saturated homologs,”

Next up for the team is a focus on increasing production and optimizing fuel properties of the methyl ketones by modulating their composition with respect to chain length and degree of unsaturation.

“Since these methyl ketones are fatty acid-derived compounds, we hope that advances that we make in enhancing their microbial production will have relevance to other fatty acid-derived biofuels as well,” Beller said.

It’s a long way to get to a “fill her up” order.  But methyl ketones are very close to fuel quality needing only a bit of processing – the compounds are very close to petroleum from plants.  With those high cetane numbers, it’s pretty good stuff.

Methyl ketone could have a bright future.  Still to work out are the extraction, getting from starches cellulose and other sugars to glucose is a challenge.  Still these could likely be gene modification solutions.

This early its hard to project, but the properties of methyl ketone are very attractive for compression ignition internal combustion engines – the diesel.    If the methyl ketones can mix happily with petroleum diesel and biodiesel perhaps the biobased fuels can finally make major contributions to the alternative mix.

Prof. Avigdor Abelson of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Zoology and the new Renewable Energy Center, with his colleagues Dr. Alvaro Israel of the Israel Oceanography Institute, Prof. Aharon Gedanken of Bar-Ilan University, Dr. Ariel Kushmaro of Ben-Gurion University, and their Ph.D. student Leor Korzen are now developing methods for growing and harvesting seaweed as a source of renewable energy.

So far the research has been based on collecting wild specimens from patches of natural growth and interpolation the results.  It’s a certainty that when seaweed is ashore it’s a bountiful and a comparatively simple biomass to handle with high quality carbohydrate components.  Seaweed also grows rapidly, in an environment where its native thus presumably won’t need intervention for pests.  For many the seaweed potential answers the call to stop the fuel production on land.

Seaweed Species Caulerpa Sertularoides. Click image for the largest view.

Prof. Abelson notes seaweed can also clear the water of excessive nutrients that are caused by human waste or aquaculture, which disturb the marine environment.  Much of the land applied fertility that washes away is still ready for use at sea near the mouths of rivers.

That aspect of the potential of seaweed is a major part of the motivation.  Anywhere man sets out to produce food for humanity the normal ecosystem is going to be substituted with high single species productivity.  The drive to high productivity requires great costs in the land, fertility, seed, equipment, storage and processing.  Even when the food is consumed, the fertility is still, for the vast most part, lost and sent to disposal.  One can blame farmers, but in fact the bigger blame falls on those who eat.  Much goes to landfill or washes out to sea.

The effect is called eutrophication – a pollution of excess fertility that leads to excessive amounts of nutrients and detrimental algae or bacteria, which harms the natural ecosystem at sea.

Satellite View of Eutrophication. Click image for the largest view.

The researchers believe that producing biofuel from seaweed-based sources could solve problems that already exist within the marine environment.  Encouraging the growth of seaweed for the harvesting and conversion into biofuel could solve these environmental problems by extracting the excess fertility and bringing it back ashore.

The system that the Israeli researchers are developing is called the “Combined Aquaculture Multi-Use Systems” (CAMUS).  CAMUS takes into account the known realities of the marine environment and human activity in it.  . Professor Abelson explains that ultimately, all of these factors function together to create a synthetic “human-made ecosystem”.

The favored example used by the researchers is fish farming oysters.  The feeders produce pollution in the form of excess nutrients and are generally considered harmful to the marine environment, would become a positive link in a chain including seaweed.  Oysters just sit and suck in particles of food.  For the feeders to be economical the oyster population has to be dense.  Oysters produce excrement like all animals and that’s the big pollution.

But oyster excrement is great seaweed fertilizer and populating oyster beds with seaweed would sustain a much greater yield of seaweed.  Food, fuel and the remnants of the seaweed could be returned to the soil on land to make more oyster food.  It sounds like a virtuous cycle.

Abelson said, “By employing multiple species, CAMUS can turn waste into productive resources such as biofuel, at the same time reducing pollution’s impact on the local ecosystem.”

To some extent the ecosystem the team envisions will work naturally.  To find the economic breakeven is going to require a bit more balancing.  Nature may take care of much of that on its own, but harvesting the seaweed as well as concentrating the oysters or fish species by feeding is going to require some management.  Whatever naturally eats oysters and seaweed is going to come calling someday.

The research team is now working to increase the carbohydrate and sugar content of the seaweed for more efficient fermentation into bioethanol.  They believe that macroalgae will be a major source for biofuel in the future. The CAMUS system could turn seaweed into a sustainable bioethanol source that is productive, efficient, and cost-effective.

Seaweed Species Caulerpa Flexilia. Click image for the largest view.

These folks are the point of the spear into the seaweed field.  The press release doesn’t give much time to the inevitable problems when man concentrates cultivation of crops.  An opportunity exists that might be both a blessing and curse. The sea is a dynamic place whose “seasons” are more moderate than on land.  What will change will come fast, what the solutions will need to be will need to come faster – especially if there is investment involved.

The seaweed aquaculture game is now on!  Good Luck Out There!  The world needs your success.

First off, South Dakota’s government has approved a subsidy of 20 cents per gallon for ethanol plants to transition over to butanol.  The cap for the subsidy is $4 million per facility equaling 20 million gallons.  The state’s own Redfield Energy is converting its 50 million gallon ethanol facility over to a 40 million gallons of biobutanol, in partnership with Gevo. The math?  It’s 40/18 million bushels of corn or 2.22 gallons.  Butanol is nearly the same in energy value as gasoline, so it’s expected to be a drop in replacement.

As noted in the post on Feb 24, Big Oil has invested in CoolPlanet and it’s a good guess that more investing is coming.   “Big Oil” as in the oil refiner Valero who already owns 8% of the ethanol production in the U.S. now, is a major backer in Mascoma.

Mascoma’s  foundation technology comes from consolidated bioprocessing, in which Mascoma’s engineered microorganism both extracts the available sugars from biomass and ferments them, all in one step. No need for those additional enzymes to extract sugars from biomass, which are generally available at 50 cents a gallon today, and perhaps as little as 30 cents per gallon in the future.  Cutting those costs out of production makes cellulose based alcohol a much more competitive fuel product.

It’s all working well for corn, new butanol and ramping up of cellulose production.  Another big ethanol producer, POET, has announced a stunning deal with DSM to start an ethanol joint venture.  This follows news that POET’s Project Liberty is to cost $250 million producing 25 million gallons annually.  The math at Project Liberty is a massive improvement.  Poet’s first run at cellulose started back in 2008, had costs in the $6 a gallon range.  Project Liberty figures to get to $1.85 – more than a 2/3rds reduction.

Valero is invested in Mascoma’s estimated $232 million first commercial facility at Kinross, Michigan.  This isn’t to be a corn fed plant.  Mascoma’s’s technology is working on hardwoods because hardwood can be gathered and shipped in with better economics than corn stover and operated at larger capacities.

The Kinross facility is designed to reach 40 million gallons, while POET has indicated that it believes that 25 million gallons is the sustainable capacity for add-on cellulosic ethanol capacity at corn ethanol plants.  This is a major difference – drawn from those gathering and shipping costs.

Mascoma appears to be slightly ahead of POET, projecting a $1.77 unsubsidized operating cost per gallon, compared to the $1.85 estimated for POET.

It’s still early for figuring what path cellulosic will grow to dominate.  There’s still the new guy, CoolPlanet with that big rich investor base.

CoolPlanet’s technology is to make synthetic hydrocarbon fuels based on biomass from plant photosynthesis that absorbs carbon from the air.  The announced focus is heading towards Miscanthus grass. The technology is said to make exact replacements for gasoline that will operate in the current gasoline fueled fleet and can make even more advanced “superfuels” for even higher gas mileage and better performance in future vehicles.

Miscanthus isn’t the only potential feedstock.  So far as one can tell, CoolPlanet is a kind of pyrolysis, some kind of revolutionary thermal/mechanical processor that directly inputs raw biomass such as woodchips, crop residue, algae, etc. and produces multiple distinct gas streams for catalytic upgrading to conventional fuel components.

Over the course of three steps three fuel precursors are produced.  Then a range of simple one-step catalytic conversion processes produce useful products such as eBTX (high octane gasoline), synthetic diesel and proprietary ultra-high crop yield super fuels.

The waste is the highly desirable biochar, in the form of activated carbon that can be used as a soil enhancer similar to “terra preta”.

Even more encouraging is the CoolPlanet model is design to be small and close to the feedstock source and even mobile.  As seen in the POET Mascoma competition, the gathering and shipping can limit growth.

There’s a lot of “oil” interest in CoolPlanet already.

The independent oil industry understands full well the implications of higher cost fossil petroleum sources.  As the Chevron folks say quite pointedly, “we’ll need and use every molecule”.

It’s also a good time to get in.  With Obama and the Federal Reserve busily pouring dollars into the economy creating a pyrolysis of the dollar so to speak, having cash isn’t a real good idea when its clear that some early renewable fuel technologies are getting competitive and can now become real working assets.  Those dollars of today will be earning inflated dollars later – one reason rich folks don’t scream as loud as the middle class and poor.

Should CoolPlanet get to scale, the estimated costs the POET and Mascoma processes could be in for real competition.  In biofuels pennies matter, two cents saved over 50 million gallons comes to a million dollars.

But we can’t call a dominator yet, POET has already shown it can slash production costs; Mascoma will surely work to the same ends.

Renewables based in ethanol and butanol are about to arrive at scale.  It took the U.S. corn farmers decades to get to nearly a million barrels a day, it won’t take the cellulosic guys anywhere near that long and by then a lot of the corn will go to butanol.
One million barrels a day done, ten million barrels a day to go.  It’s looking more probable than possible now.

A research team led by Seth DeBolt, an associate professor of horticulture at the University of Kentucky in Lexington with Chris Somerville, the Philomathia Professor of Alternative Energy and director of the Energy Biosciences Institute at the University of California, Berkeley and Mei Hong, an Iowa State professor of chemistry and an associate of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory, with Tuo Wang, an Iowa State graduate student in chemistry are showing genetic mutations to cellulose in plants could improve the conversion of cellulosic biomass into biofuels.

The team recently published its findings in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The point the team makes is genetic mutations in plants could make it easier to break down plant cellulose to the sugars.  This is a reversal of the effort to find ever better and cheaper processing tools like enzymes, it’s coming at the problem in the opposite direction.

The team used Arabidopsis thaliana, a common model plant in research studies, and its cellulose synthase membrane complex that produces the microfibrils of cellulose that surround all plant cells and form the basic structure of plant cell walls.

Mutant Plant Images by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy. See the study at PNAS linked above for compete details. Click image for the largest view.

The target is those ribbons of cellulose made of crystallized sugars. The crystal structure makes it difficult for enzymes to break in to the cellulose to free the sugars that can be fermented into alcohol for biofuels. DeBolt assembled a research team to see if genetic mutations in the plant membrane complex could produce what the researchers have called “wounded” cellulose that’s not as crystalline and therefore easier to break down into sugar.

Iowa State’s Hong had done previous studies of plant cell walls. She used her lab’s solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance technology to study the cell walls created by the newly mutated genetics. The goals were to collect as much information as possible about the molecular structure of the cell walls to see if mutations to the plants resulted in changes to the cellulose.

Hong summarizes the results, “We found that the crystalline cellulose content had decreased in the mutant cell walls. We can quantify the degree of change, and be very specific about the type of change.”

The cellulose microfibrils in the mutant cell walls, for example, were thinner than those found in normal plants, Hong explained. The studies also found an additional type of cellulose with an intermediate degree of crystal structure.

The desired result: the findings suggest the genetic mutations did create differences in cellulose production and formation.

Plus the study also reports the cellulose produced by the mutated plant could be more efficiently processed into the sugars necessary for biofuel production.

Summing up Hong says, “What this work suggests, in very broad terms, is that it is possible to modify cellulose structure by genetic methods, so that potentially one can more easily extract cellulose from plants as energy sources.”

The research team’s paper gets very optimistic saying developing techniques to modify the structure of plant cellulose in crops for better and easier conversion to fermentable sugars “could be transformative in a bio-based economy.”

The Iowa State duo contributed their expertise in solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to the study; the means by which the scientists can have a good close look.

The study offers the idea as now plausible to modify the cellulose structure in plant cell walls by genetic methods, so one can potentially more easily extract cellulose from plants as energy sources.

On the other hand, much more research is going to be needed.  In particular if the crops that are to be mutated will be exposed to the weather and environmental stresses.  It won’t be especially valuable if the plants can’t stand up to the environment.

But cultivation on land outdoors is just one segment, the research may be very important for single or very small aquatics starting with algae.  In controlled environments, soil or aquatic, the research may payoff big and quickly.

Finally, one has to note the good work of Mr. Krapfl.  The press release doesn’t seem to offer GMO directly, using the word “mutant” instead.  Mutant is a sure attention grabber, but your humble writer isn’t going to think that mutant instead of GMO is going to reset the minds that can’t accept GMO.  Thanks Mike, I got a smile from the headline.

The points for this post are a look at the investors and the biofuel technology.  Big Oil is very interested with some serious money now loaded into CoolPlanet.  At the end of last year British Petroleum and ConocoPhillips joined with General Electric and Google Ventures in a financing round.  That is significant news.

It seems from reviewing the personnel on the CoolPlanet Advisory Board that big oil was connected early.  There’s an impressive list of five scientists whose careers connected to companies like DuPont, Shell, Chevron, and Mobil, now part of ExxonMobil.  One notes that these firms are so far, not listed as investors.  But two unrelated major oil firms are involved.  This is curious, but not surprising.  As progress in made and investment information is less personal relationship based and more factual and financial oriented more investors are sure to join in.  There are two major independent oil companies involved and three more at the sideline.

CoolPlanet Process Graphic. Click image for the largest view.

The technology comes for the innovation and ingenuity of Mike Cheiky.  Cheiky is a trained physicist with 40 issued patents and more pending, enjoys citations in 350 other patents and has numerous awards. This fellow has quite a creative and insightful mind.

The CoolPlanet technology is to make synthetic hydrocarbon fuels based on biomass from plant photosynthesis that absorbs carbon from the air.  The technology can make exact replacements for gasoline that will operate in the current gasoline fueled fleet and can make even more advanced “superfuels” for even higher gas mileage and better performance in future vehicles.

Simply, the firm’s biomass fractionator technology extracts useful hydrocarbons from biomass, leaving behind the excess carbon as a high purity solid. The solid remainder is activated carbon with a very high surface area that will allow it to be used as a soil enhancer similar to “terra preta”.  Incorporating the carbon in an appropriate manner back to the soil will greatly enhance soil fertility while sequestering carbon for hundreds of years.  It should return the elemental fertility of potassium and phosphorus to the soil.  The nitrogen component and the fuel part of the carbon recycles through the atmosphere.

Cheiky’s idea is a revolutionary thermal/mechanical processor that directly inputs raw biomass such as woodchips, crop residue, algae, etc. and produces multiple distinct gas streams for catalytic upgrading to conventional fuel components.  Through the process steps, the CoolPlanet webite implies there are three production steps yielding fuel product precursors.  It seems the modular design of these segments of biomass treatment are pretty well ironed out.

To use the precursor products the company is developing a range of simple one-step catalytic conversion processes to produce useful products such as eBTX (high octane gasoline), synthetic diesel and proprietary ultra-high crop yield super fuels.

The modular design seeks to answer the biomass bulk problem.  Biomass comes in huge volumes, light in weight and difficult to economically transport.  CoolPlanet plans to package its proprietary biomass fractionator together with an “open architecture” chemical processing section in standard modular shipping containers that can each produce up to 2 million gallons of fuel per year.  Its just common sense to move the plant with a few trucks to the biomass instead of hundreds or thousands of trucks filled with biomass to the processor.  That way the long distance shipping would be the concentrated fuel products.  It’s just smart forethought.

Cheiky is taking advantage of the situation and using the engineering to add to sustainability.  Biomass isn’t particularly rich in hydrogen, which is essential in producing hydrocarbons.  That leaves a residue of excess carbon that also holds the soil’s fertility contribution to the feedstock.  Returning the element rich carbon would build soil carbon content and eventually build up a “black soil” so desired by crop growers worldwide. The shortsighted “sequestration” idea plays to the hysterical atmospheric carbon fears, but returning carbon with the fertility would cut production costs and over time improve the production yields.

The yields projected in the press release are quite impressive.  Using giant miscanthus CoolPlanet suggests that 4,000 gallons of fuel per acre is possible. That’s a huge jump up from corn ethanol, perhaps as much 12 times more.  Roughly figured, today corn ethanol from about 40% of the U.S. corn crop will provide over 10% of the U.S. gasoline volume plus some export.  Twelve times that, and at much closer to the BTU value of gasoline, would displace the whole U.S. gasoline market and considerably more.

Cheiky understands the projection is based on optimal crop growth.  Even cut by a quarter or even half the results are nearly incredible.  And this is based on miscanthus, an annual harvest.  Paired up to algae or macro algae harvesting year around, the rates would go even further up. Wood and trash waste would also be constant stream.

One has to think, Cheiky and his CoolPlanet has the legs to get started.  The press release says, “Total energy and biomass feedstock cost using today’s commodity pricing is under 60 cents/gallon.”

That’s why our free independent “Big Oil” companies are in. Your humble writer is glad for it.